The New 3 Rs: Retire, Recharge, Reconnect

Posts filed in memories

Memories, Tucked Between the Pages of my Mind . . .

12/21/2020•Family, holiday, memories

Not too bad for a 60 year old slide. I’m the tall blonde. c. 1957/8

After a lengthy wait, today I received a link to the scans of 850 of my dad’s slide, which I had sent off for processing in late September. To say I am happy with the results would be a lie. Part of it is my fault. I didn’t adequately clean some of them. Who knew 60 year old lint could stick so well to the surface of a slide. And I did send some knowing that they were not great shots, but I didn’t have the desire to scan them myself and it is so hard to tell looking through a slide viewer.

Tall Blonde Again, c. 1958

But the overall result of many of the scams is not great. The focus is soft too on many of the,m the contrast is harsh, the colors shocking. Of particular note are the 50 or so slide scans that have a bright pink/magenta cast. I know they were not pink when I sent them; I looked at each slide twice to eliminate the really bad ones. If the scanning company has turned the originals a bright pink/magenta, I will be very unhappy. I know that some slides were on Ektachrome slide film. I’m wondering if that could have made the difference, depending on the color balance settings of the scanners the company used. I will have to wait and see.

But I couldn’t resist posting a few good ones that fit the holiday themes this week.

My mom on the left, my Aunt Lucy on the right. c. 1955
I converted this one to B&W to get rid of the red. . 1961

Join the following two challenges this week:

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #128 And Here Comes the Holiday Season…

A Photo A Week Challenge: Christmas

Laughter: Worth a Repeat

11/24/2020•Family, Laugh, memories

I’ve posted this image before, but it is one of my favorite candid shots of us all laughing. When we left, the waiter asked us if we always had this much fun together. We said yes. We were in Minneapolis for our grandmother’s funeral. She was 104. She would have appreciated the laughter.

Join Nancy’s A Photo A Week: Laughter

Recognizing a Mark in the March in Time

11/23/2020•Family, life, memories

Its an anniversary of sorts. The day after Thanksgiving 40 years ago this week, I moved from Minnesota to Los Angeles, California. I had never been to California. I was heading to a job I had been offered two weeks previously, to which I had to report immediately, and about which I literally knew almost nothing. I had to pack everything up and put it in storage or give it away. Thankfully my mom and dad were in the area for Thanksgiving. Not that I had a lot of possessions in those days. I was working in retail and was just getting by.

I boarded an airplane with no place to live in Los Angeles, just a short term room rental in Hollywood I found in a Fodor’s travel guide. To say I was not an experienced traveler is an understatement. My plane landed in Las Vegas instead of LA because LAX was fogged in. There was no place to stay in Vegas because the MGM hotel had just had a massive fire. The airline finally bused us to LA when enough passengers made a fuss.

We arrived after dark. I took a taxi to where I was going to stay stay but the manager was nowhere to be found. A resident took pity on me and let me call a taxi. I went to a hotel near where I would be working. This was 1980 and I did not have a major credit card but they let me check in. I think I looked about ready to lose it. I was beat from dragging my luggage around for hours.

I survived that Thanksgiving and never regretted my journey. At the age of 26, I spent my first Christmas away from home, alone, in LA, and it was 95 degrees instead of the frigid temps of Minnesota.I went to Disneyland for the first time in March 1981. Over the years I moved up the fault line from LA to San Francisco, then to Seattle. A few months in Singapore and finally in the DC area. The pandemic is just one of the challenges I have encountered. It will not defeat me.

The next morning, it was Monday by now, I reported to work and was told I was being sent to San Francisco the next day for two weeks. Off I went with no place to come back to. The hotel they put us in in San Francisco was in the Tenderloin, not a nice area, and had plexiglass in front of the check-in desk. It is amazing we what we can deal with when we have to.

In many ways, I enjoy a Thanksgiving where I don’t go anywhere or do anything. Whether you are alone or in a bubble, be safe, stay healthy, wear a mask, and anticipate 2021.

Bouquet

KindaSquare#17: A One of A Kind 6.9 on 10.17.1989

10/17/2020•history, memories, United States

Fifteen seconds of fear at 5:09 pm on October 17, 1989 when the Loma Prieta earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay area. Walking down from the 10 floor of an office building, waiting a long time for a bus to get home, arriving after dark to a mess. It was the days before cell phone lights. I felt my way up the stairs to the third floor (US). Miracle of miracles the phone lines still worked, and I was eventually able to get through to my mother to let her know I was okay. I lived in the Inner Sunset near Golden Gate Park in an area that it turns out had been built on a marshy area. The aftershocks were more than unsettling. I spent that night in the neighbor’s backyard with the rest of the building residents.

Join Becky’s October Squares KindaSquare#17

KindaSquare#10: Still the Ones I Love 50 Years Later

10/11/2020•Family, memories

When they made them, they broke the mold.

Four of six sisters, Home, c. 1970

Join Becky’s October Squares: KindaSquare#10

KindaSquare #1 – Kinda Cute Kids, 1969

10/01/2020•Family, memories, Minnesota

Waiting for the Parade to Start, 1969, J.P.W. Friederichs

One of my pandemic projects has been going through my dad’s slides and getting them ready to send off to be scanned, which I did on Monday. My dad took a lot of pictures of us growing up and looking at them brings back lovely memories. Just what I needed at the moment. I grew up in a small town in northwestern Minnesota, close to the North Dakota border, population about 8.000. Smalltown America in the 1950s and 1960s was not perfect and certainly not the idealized bucolic place to grow up promoted by many people who look to return to a time that never existed. But it was a good place to grow up. Life was slower. There were school and community activities.  Kids could roam the neighborhood or ride their bikes to the city swimming pool in the summer without adult supervision. Candy at the corner store cast a penny. We knew most of our neighbors and the “neighbor ladies” had coffee outside on summer mornings. It was good to get a glimpse of this former life, to restore a bit of faith in humanity.

Every summer, Crookston held an annual festival. In my day, it was called Pioneer Days. Now it was called Ox Cart Days. The Red River Valley (of the North) was famous huge carts pulled by oxen along the route between St. Paul, Minnesota and Canada. At least one summer, they had a kiddie parade as part of the festivities. I think this shot was taken in 1969, based on the age of my two sisters who are in the photo. Our neighbor Christie is on the left, then my sister Karla and my sister Ruth. I’m not sure about the other girl but I think it is one of the neighbors. Dressing up was always a fun way to spend part of a day. I was 15 at the time, much too old and dignified for a kiddie parade. Here’s to those days, my friends, we thought they’d never end.  (The image is not the best. I took a photo of the slide with my phone before I sent it off to be scanned.)

 

 

Join Becky’s October Squares: KindaSquare #1

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